May 21, 2020

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of Chancellor Gillman, it is my privilege to announce that Ian O. Williamson has been appointed dean of UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business, effective January 1, 2021.

Since 2017, Professor Williamson has served as pro vice-chancellor and dean of the Wellington School of Business and Government at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In this role, he developed and deployed a faculty strategic plan to enhance postgraduate education, increased student diversity, expanded international partnerships, established an entrepreneur and innovation program, and incorporated technology into the curriculum. Professor Williamson also helped raise more than $4 million in external funding to support staff hires and research. He is on the board of directors for Wellington UniVentures, a subsidiary tasked with commercialization of university academics’ intellectual property.

A globally recognized expert in human resource management, Professor Williamson holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research examines the impact of talent pipelines on organizational and community outcomes. He has published research in and served on the editorial boards of a range of academic journals and has been recognized with several industry and teaching awards.

Professor Williamson has worked with executives in more than 20 countries across six continents to support strategic human resource management, organizational innovation, employee recruitment and retention, and executive coaching. He previously held faculty positions at Melbourne Business School, Rutgers Business School, the Zurich Institute of Business Education, the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology.

I am grateful to the search committee and its chair, Christopher Schwarz, associate professor of finance in the Merage School and director of its Center for Investment and Wealth Management, for their dedicated contributions to the search process. I would like to extend my appreciation to Eric Spangenberg, who will continue to serve as dean through tKhe end of the calendar year and then transition to a Merage School faculty position.

We look forward to Professor Williamson becoming a member of the Anteater family. Please join me in welcoming him to UCI.

Sincerely,

Hal S. Stern, Ph.D.
Interim Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Statistics

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